The past decade has been marked by a technological revolution driven by the convergence of the data processing industry with the consumer electronics industry. The effect has, in turn, driven technologies that have been known and available but relatively quiescent over the years. A major one of these technologies is the Internet or Web related distribution of documents, media and programs. The convergence of the electronic entertainment and consumer industries with data processing exponentially accelerated the demand for wide ranging communication distribution channels, and the Web or Internet, which had quietly existed for over a generation as a loose academic and government data distribution facility, reached “critical mass” and commenced a period of phenomenal expansion. With this expansion, businesses and consumers have direct access to all matter of Web documents or pages over these networks.
Also, as a result of the rapid expansion of the Web, E-mail, which has been distributed for over 25 years over smaller private and specific purpose networks, has moved into distribution over the Web because of the vast distribution channels that are available. The availability of extensive E-mail distribution channels has made it possible to keep all necessary parties in business, government and public organizations completely informed of all transactions that they need to know about at almost nominal costs. Because of the ease of such communication, the numbers of E-mail documents have greatly increased.
Web documents are provided from a Web distribution site usually made up of one or more server computers that access the document from resource databases in response to a user request sent over the Web through a Web browser on the user's receiving Web station. Significant Web distribution sites are made up of many coordinated server computers and associated databases. Such significant Web distribution sites usually serve large institutions, such as corporations, universities, retail stores or governmental agencies. These distribution sites may also provide to smaller businesses or organizations support for and distribution of individual Web pages created, owned and hosted by the individual small businesses and organizations.
Despite the substantial technological advancements made in recent years in the data transfer capacity (bandwidth) of communication networks, as well as the increasing capacity of storage systems, communication networks are having difficulty in keeping up with the rapidly increasing demand for more bandwidth and more storage capacity on the Web and associated private communication networks.
Because of the complexity of Web distribution sites, it is costly and time consuming to access Web documents through the complexity of servers and databases at the Web distribution sites. Accordingly, it has long been the practice at such sites to maintain distribution site caches that temporarily store recently accessed Web documents at a forward distribution point with respect to the Web, so as to avoid the cost and time of reaccessing such documents from the databases. Because of the increased Web usage, such cache storage facilities have been overburdened.
Similarly, there are great demands on E-mail distribution facilities. One of the more common current protocols for accessing and distributing E-mail involves POP (Post Office Protocol) servers. The service provider for the user receiving/sending display station provides a POP server that is characterized by relatively low amounts of storage capacity for the quantity of E-mail that it handles. Thus, it is not intended to store E-mail messages for long periods of time. The user's E-mail remains in the POP server until it is opened. Upon opening, the server downloads the E-mail to the user terminal. The POP server is discussed in more detail in the text, The Web Navigator, Paul Gilster, Wiley Computer Publishing, New York, 1997, at pp. 184-187.
Conventional Web distribution site server systems, as well as service providers maintaining the E-mail distribution servers, have little control of the complexity and extent of the images that the creators of E-mail or Web pages put into the documents. Such usages, of course, require much more data capacity and transmission bandwidth than does text. Consequently, electronic document distribution networks are seeking implementations that conserve the bandwidth and storage capacity requirements of electronic documents being transmitted over communication networks.